Background
The UNDP Oslo Governance Centre (OGC) is UNDP’s Global Policy Centre for policy development and applied research with an overarching focus on democratic governance and peacebuilding in crisis, conflict and transitional contexts. The Oslo Governance Centre sits within the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support and contributes to UNDP’s Global Policy Network. It engages with Norwegian, Nordic and other partners from the South in undertaking applied research and developing policy options and tools for governance support in post-crisis and post-conflict environments, in order to find practical solutions on the ground. One of the four priority areas for the OGC is UNDP’s support to the implementation and monitoring of Goal 16 of the SDGs – promoting peaceful, just and inclusive societies. This focus on peaceful, just and inclusive societies in the 2030 Agenda is new and includes key elements on democratic governance, peace, security, justice, human rights and institutional capacity.
Social, political, and economic exclusion is a fundamental contributor to fragility, instability and conflict. Even when they do not lead to outright conflict, the fruits of such exclusion: societal grievances; lack of trust in public institutions; and ineffective and unresponsive governance; all hinder development progress at the national level. On the other hand, societies whose political processes are more inclusive and participatory tend to be perceived as having more legitimate and effective governments, and as a result to be more peaceful and resilient. For this reason, UNDP places a strong emphasis on the importance of inclusive political participation and work in this area focuses, among other things, on promoting an environment that is conducive to the active participation and engagement of citizens and civil society in public decision making processes. UNDP’s work on participation includes support to civic engagement, electoral processes and institutions, parliamentary strengthening, and constitution making processes.
UNDP is the interim custodian agency for three global SDG 16 indicators including two under target 16.7 on ensuring rresponsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels. Moreover, UNDP through its UNDP Oslo Governance Centre, and in view of its long-standing commitment to enhance the quality and impact of governance assessments and to strengthen national capacities for the production of high-quality governance data at country-level, has been appointed by the UN Statistical Commission to provide technical and financial support towards the creation and launch of the Praia Group on Governance Statistics. The overall objective of the Praia Group is to encourage countries to produce Governance statistics based on sound and documented methodologies. To this end the Praia Group will be developing a Handbook on governance statistics throughout 2019 covering the measurement of various components of governance including on participation. This work will be focused on the development of a draft chapter on statistics and data for the measurement of political participation and civic engagement that brings together and synthesises emerging standards for the measurement of the structures, processes and outcomes that enable citizens to participate freely, openly and fully in public decision making, politics and the political process. The draft will incorporate inputs from a group of experts and national statistical offices including from the Praia Group.
Duties and Responsibilities
Scope of work:
Under the supervision of the Senior Research and Policy Advisor and in close consultation with other relevant UNDP colleagues, the consultant will develop a draft paper of no more than 20 pages that will be informed by discussions with colleagues working on inclusive political processes and reflect inputs to be provided by a working/drafting group comprising various stakeholders, including from the Praia City Group on Governance Statistics: The draft paper should:
- Define political participation and civic engagement
- Establish a framework that delineates the scope of political participation and civic engagement (for the purpose of the Handbook) that identifies key dimensions across the electoral arena; the civil society arena and the public institutions arena.
- Review the main data sources used to compile statistical indicators relevant to the measurement of political participation and civic engagement (including those belonging to the domain of official statistics (census, household surveys and administrative data) and will canvass practices by selected national statistics offices with long running experience in producing statistics on political participation and civic engagement.
- Include an assessment of the quality of the data in terms of relevance and accuracy (i.e. validity and reliability) providing evidence on each of these aspects to show the varying quality of some of the statistical measures and data particularly in relation to the relevance and accuracy of existing data on forms of political participation (e.g. voting in elections, participation in a volunteer organization/group/association, participation in organized protests, a public meeting, expressing views on political issues online, quotas to promote/protect the political participation of women, population groups etc).
- Highlight the contribution of civil society/academic organizations in collecting data and compiling indicators relevant to political participation and civic engagement e.g. regional barometers, European Social Survey, European Quality of Life Survey, World Values Survey, Gallup World Poll, V-DEM, Freedom House, WGI, EIU-DI etc.
- Illustrate the operationalization of the definitional and methodological guidance outlined in the previous sections and recommend a core set of political participation and civic engagement indicators.
- Outline issues for future research by NSOs and the research community.
- Ensure that the draft reflects inputs of the Praia Working Group on Participation and other key stakeholders
Deliverables:
Deliverable | Timeline* | Payment schedule |
Detailed outline of paper
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|
|
First draft of paper reflecting comments and inputs from the drafting group
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| 20% |
Second draft of paper reflecting comments and inputs from the drafting group
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| 20% |
Final draft of paper reflecting comments and inputs from the drafting group
| 30 May 2019 | 60% |
*A detailed time table will be agreed in consultation with consultant
Competencies
Functional Competencies:
- Knowledge and understanding of the literature on the measurement of political participation and civic engagement
- Superior analytical and research skills related to the measurement of political participation and civic engagement
- Demonstrated ability to write and publish analytical research and reports on democratic governance in general and on civic engagement and political participation in particular
- Experience with, and understanding of official statistics on political participation and civic engagement across a range of countries Knowledge and understanding of UNDP’s work related to inclusive political participation
Corporate Competencies:
- Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
- Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP, and partner organizations;
- Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
- Excellent understanding of international development issues and knowledge of the UN system.
Required Skills and Experience
Qualifications Education:
Experience:
Language:
Institutional Arrangements:
Travel Assignment is home-based and no travel is foreseen. Application procedure The application is a two-step process. Failing to comply with the submission process may result in disqualifying the applications. Step 1: Submission of technical proposal. That will include providing application via UNDP Job-shop (jobs.undp.org ) Interested candidates should provide the following documents and information
Note: The above documents need to be scanned in one file and uploaded to the online application as one document. Step 2: Financial Proposal. Scope of Price Proposal and Schedule of Payments: The financial proposal should state the all-inclusive, fixed total contract price in USD, supported by a breakdown of costs. The term ‘all inclusive” implies that all costs (professional fees, communications, utilities, consumables, insurance, travel as per ToR etc.) that could possibly be incurred by the Contractor are already factored into the final amounts submitted in the proposal. The form can be found here: http://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_file.cfm?doc_id=45780. If an offeror is employed by an organization/company/-institution, and he/she expects his/her employer to charge a management fee in the process of releasing him/her to UNDP under Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the offeror must indicate this at in the Financial Proposal, and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP. The consultant will be paid only after approving authority confirms the successful completion of each deliverable as stipulated under chapter 3. In the case of unforeseeable travel, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses will be agreed upon, between UNDP and Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed. In general, UNDP will not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the IC wish to travel on a higher class he/she should do so using their own resources. Upon request, the Financial Proposal is to be e-mailed as per the instruction in the separate e-mail that will be sent to shortlisted candidates only. Criteria for selection of individual consultant for award of contract: Only those candidates who meet the minimum level of education and relevant years of experience requirements will be considered for the technical evaluation. The technical evaluation will include a desk review and may also include interviews with shortlisted candidates. The combine scoring method will be used to evaluate proposals: Combined scoring method – the qualifications will be weighted a maximum of 70% and combined with the price offer which will be weighted a maximum of 30%. Technical criteria weight: 70 (70% of total obtainable scores). Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 (70%) points on technical part will be considered for the financial evaluation. Financial criteria weight: 30 (30% of total obtainable scores) When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract will be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:
Technical Evaluation (70 Points) 70% weight
Only Individual Consultants obtaining a minimum of 49 of the obtainable points of 70 points (70%) in technical evaluation would be considered for the Financial Evaluation. Financial Evaluation. The following formula will be used to evaluate financial proposal: p = y (µ/z), where p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated; y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal; Consultant presence required on duty station/UNDP premises Not required Payment terms The consultant will be paid a lump sum per milestone as stipulated in the Deliverable/payment schedule in Section 3
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References:
UNDP’s Individual Consultant’s General Terms and Conditions are provided here:
Annexes (click on the hyperlink to access the documents):
Annex 1 - UNDP P-11 Form for ICs
Annex 2 - IC Contract Template
Annex 3 – IC General Terms and Conditions
Annex 4 – RLA Template
Any request for clarification must be sent by email to cpu.bids@undp.org
The UNDP Central Procurement Unit will respond by email and will send written copies of the response, including an explanation of the query without identifying the source of inquiry, to all applicants.